This blog will be a place to post poetry written by people living with Alzheimer's disease. We will focus on poetry that is created as part of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project. We will post information and news about dementia.
We hope this blog is of use to the family members who have a loved one with dementia.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

ONION

This poem was created by the poets of Barelas Share Your Care, in Albuquerque, New Mexico and poet Michelle Otero on February 6, 2012.

The model poems Otero used were “Ode to the Onion” by Pablo Neruda and “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow.

As this is part of the APP Spanish language project she also used the Dicho: "Del dicho al hecho hay
gran trecho." (From the word to the act, there’s quite a long path.)

Otero writes about the session, "Participants raised and lowered their arms like waves as we
read 'The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls.' They laughed when I introduced Neruda’s 'Ode to the Onion.' I shared with them the names of other Neruda Odes ('Ode to My Socks,' 'Ode to
the Dictionary,' 'Ode to the Apple') and then passed around five large onions I
had brought in as props. Many remembered growing onions in their gardens.

We passed an onion as a sort of talking stick when writing
our onion poem. Many of the participants rubbed the skin between their fingers
or smoothed their hands over the round surface. Having something to hold and
respond to led to some creative lines of poetry and inspired one woman to sing
a song she’d learned as a child, changing the lyrics to fit our poem ('Lonely
little onion in a turnip patch…').

Gary Glazner

Sparking Memories: The Alzheimer's Poetry Project Anthology

The anthology has 75 of the poems we use in the project.Essays on how to use poetry to connect with people living with dementia, on why care giving matters, and on the medical implications of using poetry.More info at:http://www.alzpoetry.com

Nútreme Hoy (Nurture me today)

Our new Spanish language anthology contains: essays on how to use poetry to connect to people living with dementia, and how to create a poetry program, as well as poems and Dichos.More info at http://www.alzpoetry.com